Bread and CircusesHow do climate and environmental scientists feel about the final results of #COP28?
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Prof Martin Siegert, a polar scientist and deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Exeter, said: “The science is perfectly clear. COP28, by not making a clear declaration to stop fossil fuel burning, is a tragedy for the planet and our future. The world is heating faster and more powerfully than the COP response to deal with it.”
Dr Friederike Otto, a climatologist at Imperial College London, said: “Until fossil fuels are phased out, the world will continue to become a more dangerous, more expensive and more uncertain place to live. With every vague verb, every empty promise in the final text, millions more people will enter the frontline of climate change and many will die.”
Prof Mike Berners-Lee, an expert on carbon footprinting at Lancaster University, said: “COP28 is the fossil fuel industry’s dream outcome, because it looks like progress, but it isn’t.”
Dr Elena Cantarello, a senior lecturer in sustainability science at Bournemouth University, UK, said: “It is hugely disappointing to see how a very small number of countries have been able to put short-term national interests ahead of the future of people and nature.”
“The lack of an agreement to phase out fossil fuels was devastating,” said Prof Michael Mann, a climatologist and geophysicist at the University of Pennsylvania in the US. “To ‘transition away from fossil fuels’ was weak tea at best. It’s like promising your doctor that you will ‘transition away from doughnuts’ after being diagnosed with diabetes.”
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Even Michael Mann (@MichaelEMann), who is generally a cheerleader for the moderate mainstream "net zero" approach, was strongly critical of what went down. That's a pretty big deal.
FULL STORY -- https://archive.ph/sm172
#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #Capitalism #BusinessAsUsual
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